This site is for family, friends, and colleagues of Avner Magen to post their thoughts and memories of him. Avner died in a climbing accident on May 29, 2010, in Alaska.

Avner was a beloved and devoted father, husband and son; a terrifically warm, funny, and energetic person; a brilliant and creative researcher; and a wonderful friend and colleague.

Please share your stories, memories and words of support by sending an email to AvnerMagenMemorial@gmail.com. You may also post comments to any entry. Visit this Photo Site for a photo memorial of Avner and his family and friends. Instructions for adding pictures appear next to the album.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Vassos Hadzilacos

I admired Avner immensely for the passion, dedication, and seriousness with which he pursued the things he loved. Thinking of his zest for life brought this passage from Tennyson's Ulysses to mind:

[...]I cannot rest from travel: I will drinkLife to the lees: All times I have enjoy’dGreatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with thoseThat loved me, and alone, on shore, and whenThro’ scudding drifts the rainy HyadesVext the dim sea: I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known; cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move.How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use![...]

May we all have the courage to drink life to the lees, to shine in use --- as Avner did.